


The Ruin that Came to Utica

by TheGhostofStonewallJackson



Series: Lovecraftian Tales [3]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Ancient History, Carthage - Freeform, Gen, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Nyarlathotep - Freeform, Occult, Paganism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 13:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23978932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGhostofStonewallJackson/pseuds/TheGhostofStonewallJackson
Summary: In a bid to save her own life, Arishat of Utica makes a bargain with the Crawling Chaos.
Series: Lovecraftian Tales [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1728805
Kudos: 6





	The Ruin that Came to Utica

The full, African moon cast long shadows over the ancient city. Dust, kicked up by the fierce winds, hung in the air like the fog of distant northern lands. A few figures dwelt beside the narrow road, taking refuge in the darkness of lightless tenements. There was no candles lit. Every man, woman, and child knew better than to light their home on the night when the death-god Mot was allowed to run loose in the darkness and devour the souls of the unfaithful. Faint whispers and chants of prayers and protective incantations crept into the street from behind every locked door like black cats slinking away into the alleys. Somewhere, a baby cried, prompting his mother to silence him and pray to Baal that they would be spared.

There was but a single figure with the resolve to brave travel in the streets of Utica in the witching hours of Mot’s night. Hidden beneath the veil of ceremonial robes and lingering traces of incense, she crept her way forward through the lampless dark and wove between side streets. The glimmer of moonlight glimmered in the eyes watching her from behind cracked windows. The huddled peasants watched as she drifted away, her black cloak melting into the night. No mortal was ever truly safe on this night but Mot would have thought twice before harming a priestess of Baal, so perhaps the lone traveler had not lost all sense of reason. 

The priestess disappeared into another alley and ducked beneath a low archway into the hidden lower antechamber of the temple Naos, dedicated to lord Baal. Tonight was the only night of the year that the temple was ordered to be fully deserted lest Mot followed the devotees inside and performed his blasphemous magic on the venerated ground. The light of the bewitched Carthaginian moon danced along the marble walls and encircled the priestess’s silhouette as she pulled the key from the chain along her neck and opened the door to the inner sanctuary.

The air was replete with the protective smoke of incense left burning before the altar table, the dying embers were the sole light within the stygian chamber. The inner sanctuary of the outer pantheon gods and the unwholesome spirits was purposefully kept away from the main temple grounds. It existed for purposes of appeasement and nothing more. The sane did not pray to Mot for anything but for their lives should he be wont to take them. He was a malevolent trickster who would say anything to get that which he desired. Legend told that Mot could even recite the scripture of Baal without convulsing in pain as if his exile from the heavens had been left incomplete. 

The priestess retrieved a flint striker hidden within her robes and set the temple fire ablaze again, releasing still more clouds of fragrant purple smoke into the air. The flame illuminated rows upon rows of carvings in the marble walls of Mot with his entourage of corrupted servants, depictions of his unholy deeds, and the words to the ancient incantations a priest would need to protect the city of Utica from his wrath. His altar table was stained-purple glass carved with the faces of his thousand forms. The table legs were adorned with paintings of snakes, beetles, urns which held the ashes of infants, and purple mandrake blossoms, all of which were Mot’s preferred offerings.

Behind the altar loomed an enormous onyx statue that nearly scraped the vaulted ceiling of the chamber. The brazen image was horrifying beyond measure in its otherworldly strangeness, as if the blasphemous creature had crawled into the temple from hell itself. Its head was decorated by what appeared to be something between the hood of a serpent and the crown of the Pharoah of distant Egypt. It had a single, massive oval eye on its face, which was devoid of any apparent nose or mouth. Its arms appeared nearly human save for the unnatural almost backward-bent position in which they were held. The torso was segmented like the body of scarab beetle but it also contorted in a way unnatural to the insect. Where it should have had legs, the awful divinity had two tails that wound around the base of the stone pedestal before bending upward and back toward the head of the beast. The tails were like those of millipedes, with a thousand legs sprouting from each one. The tails terminated in pincers like the claws of the little scorpions who dwelt in the desert plains beyond the boundaries of Utica. Even the priestess, who had knowledge of all manner of magical arts and divine beings, had to stifle the shudder which threatened to travel up the length of her spine.

It was a terrible rite which she had sojourned to the temple Naos to perform. As a devotee of Baal, she was supposed to avoid the lair of his enemy to the greatest extent that she could given the nature of her duties. But it was outright forbidden to beseech the Deceiver, the Crawling Chaos, that fallen god Mot, for forbidden knowledge. He had power inconceivable to bend the universe to his will, and only felt the need to involve himself in the affairs of humankind for the purposes of his own amusement, and thus his word could not be trusted. However, the priestess had arrived in his sanctuary, on the night when the temple halls were empty, to ask of his wisdom as her final resort.

The priestess dispensed of her black cloak and removed the veil which obscured her visage. Her pitch-dark braids slipped down her back and fell against the hem of her tunic. She placed a small sack that she had carried with her beside the sanctuary fire and began to arrange the tools of her trade. An ornate gold-handled knife reserved for sacrifices to the gods, a small jar containing the cremated remains of the diseased and stillborn, a wreath of dried mandrake flowers decorated with the shells of scarabs, and a bottle of distilled ichor with a hue of Tyrian purple. She carefully opened the tiny urn and placed it onto the altar, before wrapping the mandrake wreath around its base. A generous helping of that rare and invaluable wine was poured into the urn, the substances mixing together to form a cloudy-cloudy violet concoction that caught the light of the fire like a pane of stained glass. The priestess stopped to take in a deep breath and to pray to Baal that he may one day forgive her sole transgression. Despite her close proximity to the flames, the priestess felt a cold shock pass through her body, as if Baal had truly abandoned the scene of the grisly crime and with him left her shield of divine protection.

Past the point of no return, the priestess raised her knife to her arm and dragged the blade through the velvety skin of her forearm. Blood began to well from the ragged wound and she let it drip into the vessel which held her offering. A sickly-sweet vapor began to emanate from the mouth of urn until it filled the sanctuary with a fine purple mist. The priestess forced herself to keep breathing as if filled her lungs and prompted pangs of both intense hunger and nausea. She raised her arm above her head with her palms facing upward to begin the invocation of Mot.

_ “IA! _

_ I Invoke thee, my lord, _

_ That you may go out among men, _

_ and find the ways thereof, _

_ that he in the gulf may know. _

_ IA!” _

The priestess’s voice began as an airy whisper as she allowed her mind to open itself to the untold depths of consciousness, inviting him forward with her thoughts as well as her discordant hymn.

_ “To Mot must all things be told! _

_ And he shall put on the semblance of men. _

_ The waxen mask, _

_ The robes that hide. _

_ IA!” _

Her voice began to find its usual strength and she gradually worked herself into a frenzy.

“And he shall come forth

from the world of seven Suns,

To mock the form and ways of man.

IA!”

Blood continued to flow freely from her open wound and dripped down the front of her tunic.

_ “IA! _

_ Thus I invoke thee by the great name, _

_ And do sing thy PRAISES; _

_ Mot! _

_ Great Messenger. _

_ Bringer of strange joy unto the dark moon through the void. _

_ Father of the MILLION FAVORED ONES. _

_ Stalker among the weak! _

_ I PRAISE THY INFINITE GLORY! _

_ IA!” _

The priestess screamed the end of that dread chant so loud that one may have heard from the outside. At its conclusion, her lungs drew in the noxious vapor greedily. She felt the thudding drumbeat of her heart several times before she opened her clenched eyes to look about the sanctuary. Her results were rather disheartening. The sacred texts that she had consulted for knowledge of the invocation ritual had provided no detail of how the god would make his presence known to her. Her rituals to lord Baal typically resulted in the combustion of the offering, the appearance of bright light, or the onset of epileptic episodes. However, even careful study of the offering before revealed no visible changes. She sank to her knees and laid her forehead on the edge of the altar in despondence. She had failed. It mattered not the reason, whether her offering was insufficient or her statement of devotion was lacking in prostration, or perhaps he found the idea of her murder entertaining and felt no particular motivation to free her from destiny. 

The boy’s father had sworn on his wife’s grave that the priestess would pay for his son’s death. They were clearly a family of heathens, ignorant to the rites that had protected fair Carthage from the ancient forces for generations uncountable. The priestess had prayed to Baal in earnest for days but received no answer from him. Baal had bequeathed her with protection from the arcane but not from ordinary men. The unbeliever was her Achille’s heel.

The priestess’s head snapped up as a hand tightened around her shoulder with a shock like lightning, causing every hair to stand up on end.

“Oh now don’t despair just yet, my dear Arishat,” a silky voice cooed from behind the priestess. “We’ve only just begun.”


End file.
